King’s Bounty: A new take on an old legend
Gather ’round, children, while I tell you a tale of video game history. Time was, there weren’t any games out there where you could heroically gather your might and magic and fight other people on a battlefield of honor. Fortunately, there soon came some dude who made a game called King’s Bounty, clear back in the 80′s, before graphics deserved the name. Shortly thereafter he made a better game, called Heroes of Might and Magic, and if I had written this article two years ago it would be entirely about the Heroes series of games.
The Heroes series is awesome. You heroically ride a horse, gather troops in your towns, and heroically throw your troops against someone else’s troops in big turn-based battles full of tactics and humorous unit animations (the series is known for slipping humor in EVERYWHERE). The series is also known for the varying levels of heroic involvement in the actual battles, as follows:
- Heroes I: The heroes sit in tents, and occasionally casts spells out the doors of said tents
- Heroes II – III: The heros sit on their horses on the edge of the battlefield and occasionally cast spells at people on the battlefield
- Heroes IV: The heroes get down off their horses and actually go out and fight alongside the soldiers, and can die alongside the soldiers.
- Heroes V: The heroes decide that fighting is scary and sits back on their horses again, letting the soldiers do all the dying.
I’ve played all of these, and loved them to pieces in their time. But then something weird happened.
Remember King’s Bounty? That one back in the 80′s that kind of spawned the Heroes series? Well some Russian game company (specifically, 1C) bought the rights to that franchise (I can only imagine that the sale price was along the lines of “Big Mac and Super-Sized fries”) and turned it into solid gold.
King’s Bounty: the Legend tells the story of King Mark, who was Wise and Just, and so was called King Mark the Wise. He was sad that he couldn’t have kids, despite all the help from his doctors and magicians. No wife is ever mentioned, by the way, and we’re left to wonder if King Mark the Wise really deserved the name.
Anyway the Gods take pity on the clueless bachelor king and give him a baby named Amelie. This all happens in the pre-game backstory animation. The game starts and King Mark tells you to go heroically gather up the stolen tax money (the “King’s Bounty”, see?). Amelie tells you to get her a flower. She’s, like, 7. This is basically the end of their involvement in the game. Why you are told all about their lives is anyone’s guess. But who cares? The game is a riot. You heroically ride a horse around an absolutely beautiful landscape, heroically gather up troops, and heroically send them into battle. Your hero is off screen somewhere, presumably sitting on his horse, casting spells at people. Incidentally, your hero can get married, and has no problem having kids, no divine intervention required.
Then it gets better. The second game in the King’s Bounty series is King’s Bounty: Armored Princess! That’s right, Amelie is back, she’s all grown up, and now SHE gets to heroically ride a horse around and heroically send her troops into battle while sitting somewhere off screen casting spells! The landscape is just as beautiful, the weird dialog boxes full of text are just as funny and silly, and the battles are just as cool. But wait, there’s more! Amelie gets a pet baby dragon, who sits on the sidelines of the battle field under his portable apple tree, plays with a giant snail that he seems to like, and unleashes vicious fiery death at your command. He’s a great little dragon.
The third game (King’s Bounty: Crossworlds) takes the Armored Princess game and adds new units and stuff. If you decide to play the series just skip the regular Armored Princess Campaign and play Orcs on the March instead. It’s the same game, but with all the fun new stuff included.
The whole series permeated by humor and lightheartedness so lacking in most epic adventures. Amelie gets along with people. Sure, she may be responsible for sending uncounted orcs to an early grave, but when she actually gets to the island of the orcs she’s more than willing to help one of them out in his marriage proposal to his green-skinned sweetheart. And it’s not just orcs. Amelie runs errands for the undead, the supposedly scary lizardmen, and even a couple of demons. She just isn’t sort to judge someone based on the color and/or flammability of their skin. There’s only a few real bad guys, and they get dealt with accordingly.
As I said, Two years ago, before I discovered King’s Bounty, this article would have been about the Heroes of Might and Magic series. But now I like King’s Bounty better, because so many of the irritating parts of the Heroes games are refreshingly missing from King’s Bounty. Gone is the task of managing multiple heroes who just move troops from one city to another; you have exactly one hero, and he (or she, depending on the game) buys all their troops from local shops. That’s right, you just ride heroically up to a witch’s cottage, and peruse her wares: boots of snakeskin, oil of fire, 438 wolves, 200 snakes, and a scroll of poison spit. Who needs to worry about managing your own cities? All the boring stuff is gone; all the fun stuff is front and center.
And I just noticed, all the fun stuff is currently 50% off on Steam. So, if you desire to go heroically wander the world in search of the King’s Bounty you couldn’t have picked a better time to do so.
You have a limited amount of time, so why spend it reading about things that suck or are only kind of okay? Favorite thing EVER is not a review site. We're unrepentant fans, and this is the stuff we love. Hope you like gushing, because we're about to embarrass ourselves.
Bought! Also, there has to be some kind of joke here about “King’s Bounty: Barely Armored Princess,” am I right?
That’s her “Mage” armor. Apparently clothing gets in the way of spellcasting. She wears more armor (and has different colored hair) as a Knight or Paladin. Also, in King’s Bounty World, “Paladin” doesn’t mean “casts healing spells”, it means “good mix of Knight and Mage”. Don’t ask me, ask the Russians.
I would buy this for Matt’s birthday, but he’s already snapped it up!